25^th General Assembly and Congress of the International Union of Crystallography

Workshop Current Trends and Future of Crystallography
Meeting of the International Programme Committee

Radomír Kužel¹, Ivana Kutá Smatanová²

¹Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University, Prague
² Faculty of Science, University of South Bohemia, Ceske Budejovice

IPC members and guests in the Prague Congress Centre

It is a tradition of the IUCr congresses that the congress programme is put together during three day meeting of International Programme Committee (IPC), usually close to the congress venue. When we found in Hyderabad at the last IUCr congress that for future the costs of the IPC meeting cannot be covered from the IUCr budget, we considered cancellation of such a meeting and discuss everything only online. However, our own experience and advices of preceding organizers of the IUCr congresses lead us to conclusion to keep it and organize it in some way. Such a face-to-face meeting can be very efficient with respect to sometimes endless e-mail discussions.

During discussions on the form of the meeting, we took into account that this will be anniversary the 25th congress and therefore it would be worthwile to prepare some overviews what is going on in current crystallography and since  the work of the IUCr is also based on activities of its commissions we asked them for help.

We suggested to not organize just an IPC meeting but to start with presentations of all the IUCr commissions (their representatives in IPC) in one-day event we called workshop Current Trends and Future of Crystallography and open it to public. We also put an effort to early and quite frequent e-mail communication to IUCr commission and IPC members in order to keep their discussions on IUCr congress live and avoid just picking up the topics a few hours befored the deadline. It appeared, that everything was useful and well accepted and lead to very efficient work of the IPC. Therefore, we can recommend it also for future and we are summarizing basic points below.

Early setup of IPC 

Already during the 24th IUC congress, the commission chairs were asked to discuss their representatives for the Prague congress. The request to the commissions for submitting more candidates to IPC was sent in December 2017. More candidates are useful and also necessary to have a chance to make gender and regional balance of IPC.
We have selected IPC members and asked them to accept the role in mails containing also a list of tasks they are expected to do, in spring 2018.

The IUCr EC approved the IPC in May 2018.Then the place and time of the IPC meeting and CTFC workshop were determined. Actually, from offered three months March-May, only one week in May seemed to be suitable for all. Such early announcement is useful for all since they can plan it well. Moreover, one may get better prices in the hotel and possibly for travel.

IUCr commissions

Chairs of all the IUCr commissions received a request to prepare a text representing the commissions at the workshop (in proceedings) and they were also informed that their representatives in IPC should have about 15 mins presentations there. This was sent in August 2018 and then reminded several times with a few extensions of deadline from March 1, 2019 to and of April 2019. In instructions for the texts it was written the following.

„Since the IUCr commissions are different we are not putting any strict instructions for the text length nor the contents scheme. In all cases, it can be introduced by a short description and meaning of the commission subject. Then possibly structured, if there are more streams in the subject with examples of advances achieved. Highlights from last years, problems to be solved etc. It should not be only about avtivities of the commissions. They can be mentioned there too, in particular in connection to the above items.“

Database driven software for online input, editing and list of everything. 

True online database allows very flexible work and easy generation of different lists, categories etc. It was designed and prepared in autumn 2018 but scripts were modified actually all the time. All the data have been available for all the IPC members for all the time and, of course, ost important during the IPC meeting. In addition to the lists ordered by commissions, priorities and for people also by regions, countries and gender the so-called classified lists were generated according to the fields of interests in soem way similar to the ECA focus areas. They were also used to make some balance between these areas in the programme. Unlike the ECA, mutiple assignments of the lectures and sessions was allowed. The used itmes were: Biological and macromolecular crystallography, Physcis and fundamental crystallography, Materials and Minerals, Chemical crystallography, structures, Methods, instrumentation, Theory, computation, modeling, data, standards and General interests.

CTFC workshop 

This was organized in Prague Congress Centre, whole day, on May 14. After short opening, the introductory speech on current trend and future of crystallography was given by one of the sponsors – Dubravka Sisak-Jung from Dectris and then all the commission had short presentations. The texts were published in Materials Structure vol. 26 (2019) no. 2. Available online at www.xray.cz/ms.

In addition to IPC members, the workshop was open to other participants giving total number of 70 people. After lunch, participants had a chance to see the whole congress centre in an hour excursion. The programme was finished by a dinner and a few of us also went to the evening concert of Toto Cutugno which was ocassionally the same day there.

Such a meeting was organized for the first time but we think that it was well accepted and some of the IPC members strongly recommend to do it in future as well. It is especially helfpful that all the IPC members can see at the beginning problems and topics of all other commissions. Then, the following discussions on the programme is easier and compromises can be much better achieved.

IPC meeting

The IPC meeting on May 15-16 was held in hotel Olsanka where all the IPC members stayed. Unlike plans, it was suggested to start with discussion and then voting on plenary lectures then keynote lectures and finally discuss microsymposia. We had to cut proposals. Plenary lectures from 26 to three, keynote lectures to 34 (to about one third of all proposals) and microsymposia to 104 (to about one half of all proposals). The co-chairs were not discussed in detail. After quite long-time preparation, the work of the IPC appeared to be efficient and we have arrived quickly in one and half day to the above reductions. Everything is expected to by approved by IUCr executive committee in June.

From the excursion in Prague Congress Centre
CTFC workshop	IPC meting